The PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG®) Micro Telecommunications Architecture (MicroTCA™) defines the requirements for a system that uses PICMG Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) modules directly on a backplane (PICMG® MicroTCA.0 Draft 0.6—Micro Telecom Compute Architecture Base Specification). MicroTCA may serve as a platform for telecommunications and enterprise computer network equipment as well as consumer premises equipment. MicroTCA is complimentary to PICMG3 Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA®, or PICMG3). While ATCA is optimized for high capacity, high performance applications, MicroTCA addresses cost-sensitive and physically smaller applications with lower capacity, performance and less-stringent availability requirements.
In the prior art MicroTCA systems, all modules are inserted from one side of the subrack or chassis (i.e. the front of the subrack), resulting in all input/output (I/O) forced to be from the front of the subrack. This has the disadvantage in that all I/O cabling is in the front of the subrack, which blocks maintenance personnel from easily accessing the subrack and creates a hazardous and cluttered area where many subracks are present.
There is a need, not met in the prior art, to have a MicroTCA subrack where modules may be inserted from the front and the rear and where rear I/O is available to allow better access and more efficient routing of external cables. Accordingly, there is a significant need for an apparatus that overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art outlined above.
Elements in the Figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the Figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Furthermore, the terms “first”, “second”, and the like herein, if any, are used inter alia for distinguishing between similar elements and not necessarily for describing a sequential or chronological order. Moreover, the terms “front”, “back”, “top”, “bottom”, “over”, “under”, and the like in the Description and/or in the Claims, if any, are generally employed for descriptive purposes and not necessarily for comprehensively describing exclusive relative position. Any of the preceding terms so used may be interchanged under appropriate circumstances such that various embodiments of the invention described herein may be capable of operation in other configurations and/or orientations than those explicitly illustrated or otherwise described.